"You Might Be The Killer" Review

It's a frequent and legitimate complaint about how there doesn't seem to be any creativity in movies anymore; it's nothing by sequels, remakes/reboots, movies based on comic book/videogame franchises, etc. Looking at the top 25 grossing domestic box office films of 2019 at this writing, only FOUR aren't in the aforementioned categories: Jordan Peele's disappointing Us at #7; Elton John biopic Rocketman at #19; Yesterday (man wakes up in world where no one has heard of the Beatles and he exploits their songbook for profit) at #24; and cheapie horror movie Escape Room at #25.

What originality that seems to be out there seems to be coming from odd sources. Rather than books or magazine stories inspiring movies, social media posts have been snapped up by studios, though nothing appears to have come from them. A Reddit post musing on whether a Marine battalion transported back in time with their modern weaponry could topple the Roman Empire sold in 2011 and was never heard from again. Ryan Reynolds signed on to produce a horror movie based on another Reddit post, but it's early in the process.

An exception is You Might Be The Killer, a movie I'd never heard of until it popped up on my cheap movies app, but discovered was based on a funny Twitter thread (you may want to skip it since it's basically the whole plot) I'd actually read when it happened in 2017. Sci-fi writers Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig had a deadpan back-and-forth where Sykes is asking for help about his job as a camp counselor and how everyone seems to be dying around him and Wendig trying to talk him through the situation and determine what's going on based on clues, ultimately realizing, Sykes may be the killer. It was hoot that took five minutes to read, but now it's been transformed into a 92-minute horror-comedy which has its moments, but is just too long for the concept to sustain.

Fran Kranz (the stoner from The Cabin in the Woods) is Sam the panicked summer camp owner and Alyson Hannigan (Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is Chuck (get the names?), the manager of a comic book shop, he frantically calls begging for advice on who's killing all his counselors. Since it's determined pretty early on that he's the killer - not a spoiler since it's the title! - the run time is padded out with flashbacks on how this came to be and how it turns out.

While there are a few laughs (e.g. the kill counter that starts with "LOTS") and a couple of decent bloody kills, there's simply not enough substance to the premise to draw it out to even a modest feature length. There's probably a concise 30-45 minute version of this story that'd work on an anthology series.

Kranz is good at conveying the freaked-out state of Sam and it's nice to see Willow Hannigan again, though all she does is play the horror movie rules expert from a Scream movie. The cast playing the counselors are all for the most part (literally) disposable randos with the exception of Brittany S. Hall who was Sam's former flame, but is best described as Supa-Hawt Black Girl Who Looks Like Young Angela Bassett Hubba Hubba.

While too long by at least a third, You Might Be The Killer is modestly entertaining, though if you read the linked Twitter thread, you've pretty much seen it all.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.(It's currently streaming on Shudder)